I was under the impression that the machinery for screening lace patterns onto float glass was a package deal supplied by the US Bent Glass Co., complete with sample designs. I am also fairly certain that pieces with identical decoration originated in different countries. The raw material for production is float glass, hence the association of Chance with Pilkington

Ivo, this has put a different slant on my thoughts about screen-printed glass as I wasn't aware of the associations with US Bent Glass: if the same designs came from different manufacturers is it also possible the blank glass shapes could have been sourced from a different supplier? :shock:

As Chance were producing many diverse designs, I assume they created their own screen-printing process? Semi-rhetorical question...

I do have one query though: as float glass was introduced in 1959 by Pilkingtons, the first Fiestaware by Chance (c.1951) would have been rolled sheet glass. However, I'm not aware that Chance did move over from rolled sheet to float glass at any time, but will try to find this out.

I have no idea what the precise manufacturing process entails, but I have always assumed the starting material was flat glass which is fed into a machine and the printed and cut-to-size item comes out at the other end - printing, cutting and press forming in one single operation, possibly followed by annealing and edge polishing But then, I used to work in metalforming machine tools so I may be assuming too much here. It should not make much difference if you use cylinder glass, rolled sheet or float for this. I always assumed it was float because of the greenish tinge in many of these items.